Jesus Or Jihad? FBI, Cops Differ On Perp's Words

MAY 2--The disturbed Texas man who was arrested Sunday night after illegally driving through a security gate at Dallas Love Field airport repeated a five-letter word beginning with ‘J’ several times before he was forcibly taken into custody.

Dallas cops say it was “Jihad.”

FBI agents say it was “Jesus.”

Law enforcement officers agree that Ruben Jimenez Martinez, 36, drove his 2007 Chevrolet Tahoe onto airport grounds without permission. Martinez, investigators allege, drove around an authorized vehicle “at a high rate of speed” down an adjacent taxiway.

Traveling in excess of 100 mph, Martinez drove to a hangar, where he exited his vehicle and entered the building. According to Dallas police, the area Martinez entered was “readily accessible to planes and fuel.”

The Dallas cop who approached Martinez inside the hangar reported that he “appeared to be in emotional distress.” Officer Deborah Grabowski noted that she tussled with Martinez as she sought to place him in custody. After Martinez adopted an “aggressive fighting stance,” Grabowski struck Martinez with her collapsible baton.

While waiting for backup officers to arrive, Grabowski overheard Martinez “yell in an unknown language and stated ‘jihad’ approximately 3 times,” according to a Dallas Police Department report. Seen in the above mug shot, Martinez was subsequently handcuffed and arrested for illegally entering a “critical infrastructure facility.”

A relatedl case was filed yesterday by federal prosecutors, who accused Martinez in a U.S. District Court complaint of illegally entering an airport area “with the intent to evade security procedures or restrictions.”

In a sworn affidavit supporting the felony complaint, FBI Agent Rodney Sanchez makes no mention of jihad. Instead, the federal investigator reported that Martinez said that he yelled “in the name of Jesus” three times when first confronted inside the hangar.

Sanchez also stated that Martinez claimed that he said, “In the name of Jesus, open the gate,” when he approached the entrance that he later sped through on April 28. Sanchez added that Martinez “stated that he had a vision given to him by God of this same place and that he believed God had directed him to Dallas Love Field.” 

The federal complaint makes no mention of Officer Grabowski’s report that Martinez was yelling in “an unknown language and stated ‘jihad’ approximately 3 times.”

Martinez, who has been in custody since his arrest, is scheduled to appear tomorrow afternoon at the Dallas federal courthouse for a detention hearing. (5 pages)